


The Indian Princess of Nootka Sound

by Adair_Coffin



Category: Taboo (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-26 18:50:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12064938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adair_Coffin/pseuds/Adair_Coffin
Summary: Lorna and James arrive at Nootka





	The Indian Princess of Nootka Sound

**Author's Note:**

> I had to put this down, even though I am reworking and adding bits to my other two pieces (I have been inspired this week, especially by some of the magnificent James/Lorna and general Taboo fic out there!). When James finds the theater pamphlet it is for a play called the Noble Savage, in which Lorna played the Indian Princess. There was a similar play at the time called 'The Indian Princess', which I read in an American Studies class years ago. I went and found a copy (hooray Internet). it's a terrible play- pretty melodramatic, historically inaccurate (flamingos in Virginia) and portrays Native Americans as one dimensional. However, it would have been just the thing that Lorna Bow would have starred in during the period (It was written in 1808), and the bit of song is from the chorus.  
> And there's some mild smuttiness towards the end. Just because.

On the night they finally reach Nootka Sound, Lorna Bow Delaney dreams of England. Safe in her berth, the creaking of the ship lulling her into a dark sleep, she sees the green of her childhood home, the church steeple of the tiny village where she was a girl. Making her way down a little path, she emerges into a busy thoroughfare, and she can smell London. In her dream, she walks barefoot through Covent Garden. Sees the lanterns lit at the Theatre Royale, the floorboards of the stage against her feet. The chill of the Thames at dusk. It is a peaceful dream, comforting as she is so far from it, and can never return. When she awakes, the dawn is gray, the wind is cold, and for a moment sadness washes over her. As she settles down into the berth, she begins to tear up, but swallows it back. London is the past, London is the past, she keeps repeating in her head.  
The advance party goes ashore. She watches from the rail of the ship as James climbs into the boat. His gaze stays with her.  
“I’ll be back in the evening”, he promises.  
She smiles at him, nodding, pulling her wool wrap closer around her. She notices Robert sitting with French Bill in the boat. He smiles back at her and gives a wave. She glances outwards towards the misty shore.  
Nootka. They are here at last.

Once upon a time, Lorna played the Indian Princess. She wore barely a stitch on stage, just a beaded short shift, causing a great commotion in the audience. It was a popular play, and went on for 6 months. It was where she met Horace Delaney, who came to her with the program gripped in his hand. He said, with a tear in his eye, that her performance had brought him back to a place he never thought to go again. It was when everything changed.  
This morning, in the cold dawn, James rowed her over to the rocky beach. He jumped out into the chilly water, and held out his hand to her. She grasped it, and went to jump onto the shore, but his strong hands found her waist, and placed her gently in the rough sand. Water lapped at the edge of her boots, and her skirts billowed in the breeze. Above her, the pine trees stood at attention, leading the way into dark passages. Her breath is stolen by the peaks beyond. A few huts and houses sit away from them, but it is the woods that beckon to her. Now she knows why Horace Delaney cried at her play. If that trite musical had reminded him of this place, she understands his emotion completely.  
She looks back at James, who has the faintest smile pulling on the sides of his mouth. It never quite comes to fruition, but its emotion is there. Holding his eyes, she pulls off her boots and stockings, gathering up her skirts so that he has an ample view of her thighs, but this doesn’t bother her in the least. Then she throws the offending garments into the surf and lets her bare feet sink into the frigid sand.

 

In all of their voyages, James has never touched her, not reached for her, although he wanted to, with every fiber in his being. He wanted to touch those curls, pull them around his fingers, and pull her to him, and sink himself into her. But he hesitated, in every situation they were placed in. He’s not sure what stopped him, because he is certain that he may be able to find absolution between her thighs, but James Delaney thinks it has something to do with timing. ‘Tell me one thing that is not just a matter of time’, his own words echo back to him, watching Lorna set eyes on Nootka, the fabled Nootka, for the first time.  
Standing here, on the shore, he takes her in. Her hair is not so crimson, but softened into a tawny red. The tight curls, bereft of the trappings of a woman’s retinue of heating curlers, are not so tight, but soft waves, that she wraps a scarf around. City dresses gave way to simple cotton gowns, although he’s thinking that in this climate they may need to find some wool. She had taken to wrapping herself in a ships blanket, cut lengthways in two, as an effective shawl. And now she has forgone her boots and stockings, and they lay forgotten in the surf.  
Then her smile turns into a grin, and she laughs, running up the beach a little. Of all the reactions he anticipated, this final act of freeing herself surprises him most of all. But he is enchanted by it. And to make the scene, she begins to sing:  
“Jolly comrades raise the glee,  
Chorus it right cheerily  
For the tempest’s roar is heard no more  
And gaily we tread the wish’d for shore…”

The bottom of her dress is soaked, reminding him of the time she crossed a river for him. She returns demurely from her brief revel, and takes his arm. Together, they walk up to the small gathering of huts and the larger outbuilding. James does not see his mother, or his sister, or any other ghosts here. Perhaps Lorna’s song is correct and the tempest in his head is quieted, at last, simply by being here with her.  
He comes to her, that evening, late, when every other living soul is asleep or returned to the woods. She could not sleep, too giddy from simply being there, and perhaps the wine consumed as well. He pulls back the makeshift door of the hut, and in the light, she knows it’s him. He watches her as he pulls off his boots, his trousers, and she’s not sure if he’s daring her to send him away. She lies still, watching him from the pallet of furs. Her throat is dry with expectation. As he is pulling his shirt off, his eyes gleaming in the night, she finally reaches out a hand towards him.  
“Will you take me into the forest”, she whispers to him as he pulls at her stays, as the corset falls away.  
“Mm. Yes”, he answers, taking a breast in his hands, reaching to pull the shift off of her. She sits up enough to completely remove her clothing until he is settled, naked on top of her. His mouth finds her nipples, her stomach, her cunt, then returns to her mouth, pushing her legs apart and entering her.  
This is no staged love scene before an audience, no murmurs of love and devotion, no soft piano music. He is not a gentle lover, and makes no apologies for it. She cries out, not caring who can hear her through the thin walls, the flimsy door. The furs, while soft, scratch when James thrusts, causing her to move against the grain. She holds onto his arms, his head, his beads hitting her chest, listens to his grunts and small cries. When he lifts himself up, her hands follow to his chest, and she feels him spill into her. She arches her back, and then welcomes him back into her arms. His mouth finds her cheek, her neck, and hums gently into her pulse point.  
“Please do that again”, she whispers.  
Something always bothered Lorna when she played the Indian Princess. The story always seemed off somehow. Confronted by two suitors, one a Native prince, a warrior, and the other a European Soldier, the Indian Princess volunteers for assimilation and eventual domination as a traditional wife, going off to fit into any parish in England. If she had written the play (and here in the New World, perhaps she will tinker with it, some), then the suitor would have been a combination of both, of two worlds at odds and yet with glaring similarities, all existing within the same character. Then the Indian Princess would not have to choose, and she, like Lorna, could, in the chilly gray morning, on a bed of pelts and blankets, straddle her warrior soldier, and bring herself to ecstasy without having to compromise any part of her complicated nature, or of his.  
James is in awe of the creature above him. Something about being here has turned his little actress somewhat wild. He can see it in her eyes. It is not a bad thing, not manic, or psychotic, but simply an opening of another part of her. When she comes, he holds her hips, then gently lowers her down to his side. He feels he is capable of doing anything in this moment, that everything he had achieved has led up to this point. The tea and pelts that flow through this post are his. This is his kingdom, and no one will take it from him. And he will finally, here in the wilderness, make Lorna his bride.  
In his arms, the Indian Princess of Nootka Sound smiles.


End file.
